So here it is, issue #69. For a paper like ours, this is like the Fourth of July, the World Series, and Purim all rolled into one. Issue sixty-nine. You get it, sixty-nine? Sixty-nine, you get it? You get it, huh?

Actually we have mixed feelings about sixty-nines. They've got positive and negative aspects. Sometimes, a 69 really sounds like a good idea. It almost makes cunnilingus sound appealing. You can grab her ass cheeks with both hands and pull, and it's like washing your face. Except it's not like washing your face-- it's like washing your face with a chick's box, which is a totally different thing. You fix that thing over your mouth and nose like a gas mask, and before you know it, you're eye to eye with her asshole. You're literally staring right at her sphincter. There might even be a little piece of lint hanging there; you might even find yourself freeing your mouth up from time to time to try to blow it off. That is, if you can see through all the hair under your eyes.

Of course, it's not so bad, because on the other end, you've got her throat all blocked up with your unit. And your balls are straddling the bridge of her nose and falling in her eyes, which makes you laugh. Every now and then you lower your weight a little too much, and you can hear the effort at respiration interrupted. About then is when the doubts start cropping up. Is this going to go on too long? Can I even cum like this? If not, how and when do I make a graceful exit? Should I roll over and give it up now, or should I keep going? And if I keep going, how long do I keep going? The latter starts to become a serious issue after a little while. After all, after you've been in a sixty-nine for a few minutes, the enthusiasm for the cunnilingus part of it is usually more or less gone. You find yourself thinking that maybe you should hold off on cuming-- because if you do, you'll find yourself still munching box, with nothing left to look forward to yourself. That's just one of the pitfalls of the 69.

Overall, actually, the sixty-nine is pretty overrated. When you're in high school, you feel like you're really cool if you manage to talk a girl into doing one. But once you've done it a few times, you realize that it isn't all that much fun. And if you're in your mid-twenties or even your thirties already, it's almost impossible to be in a sixty-nine and not feel extremely self-conscious. You feel like some high school loser, the same way you would riding a skateboard or playing Zaxxon in a convenience store. You feel like you're trying to hard to have a good time. In fact, if you follow your train of thoughts far enough, you start to wonder, since you're not enjoying yourself at all, whether you might actually be gay. Maybe that's why you even suggested the sixty-nine in the first place-- you were insecure about your heterosexuality, abashed by your lack of enthusiasm, and trying to overcompensate. Maybe that's what it meant. Maybe that's why you're bent over in this ridiculous position.

There are other problems with the sixty-nine. Certainly it's no bowl of cherries for the girl, either, and you can't help but be aware of that. You might be proud of it, you might like it a lot, but you can't not be aware of it. The thing is, in a sixty nine, a woman is no longer shielded from the ugly reality of all that horrible stuff lurking there behind your balls. That thatch of damp, tangled, steaming pubic hair, a new catch of the day stuck in every other millimeter, with the hot yawning evil of your ass-cavity peering out at her from behind the underbrush-- with just everyday oral sex, she doesn't have to see that. But now it's right there, and if you're on top, she can't move to look away even if the moment arrives where it suddenly becomes unbearable. She's just got to lie there and keep sucking, keep trying to steal a little air here and there. And she knows that before it's all over she's going to have to negotiate a load in her throat, and somehow get you to pull out in time for her to keep from choking to death. Plus, for a woman, the carrot of the 69's carrot-and-stick arrangement is a lot less appetizing than it is for men. Women all say they love oral sex, but deep down inside, they know they respect a man a little bit less every time he willingly goes down on her. So with each succeeding sixty-nine she's basically got to lie there and face the reality of a future of steadily declining sexual expectations, all the while with your nasty hog in her mouth. And besides, if she's over twenty, she's also probably thinking this whole time about how she's not getting any younger. Is this what she has to look forward to? Just more and more of this?

We wish there was some way we could answer that question for her. We really can't. We don't know anything, except that we made it to our sixty-ninth issue. It felt good at first. But now, we're not so sure. Maybe it hasn't been all that much fun-- for either of us.